MYOB Light offers a simple way to query Silicon Graphics' corporate sales databases. Though flexible, MYOB Light does not offer all the power or interactivity of the Business Objects-based MYOB.
To use MYOB Light, select Axes, Options and Filters by scrolling through and clicking on the tick-sheet below, then click on the Submit Query button. The result will be a table of rows and columns as you requested.
MYOB Light gets its information from the MYOB Sybase database, which in turn gets its information from Magellan, the corporate repository for sales information. Magellan gets loaded with information from sales databases around the world.
To find out more about these feeds and the accuracy of this data, click here.
When you submit a query MYOB Light first checks some preprocessed files, "Datafiles," to see if the data you need is there. If so, the data will be extracted in a few seconds. If not, a full SQL query of the MYOB backend database will be run. This typically takes several minutes.
Both of these databases are updated daily. The backend database is updated first and the Datafiles are updated second. While the backend database is being update, only queries that hit the Datafiles will work and they will be a day old. While the Datafiles are then being created, some queries that would otherwise hit the Datafiles have to query the backend database.
For filters that allow input (Customers, Products, and Sales Orders), please input only one entry per line within the textarea. Searches are case-insensitive. For wildcards, use % to represent any string of zero or more characters and _ to represent any single character.
For example, to search for all customers with the string 'TANDEM' in
their names, type:
%TANDEM%
Once you have a results table, you can find out more about a particular row by "drilling down" on that row. You can drill down by any of the available dimensions, such as Division, Channel and Application Type.
To drill down, click on the small checkbox to the left of the row you want then select the dimension by which you want to drill from the pop-up menu just below the table. Click on "Submit Drill-down Query" and the data you asked for will be retrieved, just as if you had gone back to the original ticksheet and recreated the same detailed query.
The options you chose on the original query carry forward to the drill-down. If you want to change them, you have to rerun the query from the ticksheet.
You can pick more than one row for drilling, in which case the data for all selected rows is combined.
If there is more than one column, a line chart will be drawn. In addition, if you requested totals on the columns, then a stacked chart will show totals; and if you requested percentages that total 100% on each column then a stacked chart will show percentages.
If there is only one column, and you have requested either percentages or sums on the columns, then a pie chart will be drawn.
Netscape does not allow you to print applets, such as the MYOB Light charts, using the regular Print... command on the File menu. Instead you have to click the small button under a chart to print it.
This will download a PostScript file to your machine. To have that file automatically sent to your default printer, add the following (all on one line) to the .mailcap file in your home directory:
application/postscript; lp %s \; echo SENT FILE TO PRINTER
It may help to set your browser fonts smaller. Look under Preferences under the Options menu bar.
Graphs don't print. Major problem. It's because Netscape does not support printing the output of Java applets, such as these graphs. Very frustrating.
Charts plot the numbers in the table. For example, if 3.7 has been rounded in the table to 4, then 4 is plotted, not 3.7.
Pie charts will sometimes hit a rounding error, for example, rounding 9.58% to 9% instead of 10%. This happens because data to the pie chart is modulo 360. (9.58% of 360 degrees is 34.48 degrees which gets sent to the chart as 34 degrees. 34/360 = 9.44% which rounds to 9%.) This sometimes creates a white gap where the final slice is.
When fiscal quarters are placed in the rows, they are ordered largest to smallest. When they are placed in columns, they are ordered chronologically.
The MYOB database only stores six quarters of data.
The stacked bar chart does not appear when the column adds to zero.
Under Netscape 2.0, make the results window come up without the location bar, menubar, etc. That way the window will be distinct and people won't accidently use it as the query window.
Add rep, branch, region, area.
Add an option to indicate whether customer is ship-to, bill-to or sold-to.
Add a percentage option for 'growth over previous'.
Add margin.
Add day and week.
Add a tool to do hockey stick forecasting using the Marketing Ops Council method.
Add the ability to automatically allocate OTHER application types.
Add ability to drill down vertically.
Comments to: MYOB Light Team